


One step at a time

by SonnyGoten



Series: One step back, two steps towards friendship [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-07 02:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15898989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonnyGoten/pseuds/SonnyGoten
Summary: Ron is thrown back into the past and chooses to make a small difference.





	One step at a time

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. Wrote this on my smartphone.

With his breath held in his lungs, Ron carefully cracked an egg over a bowl, his mind going back to the events of the last hour.

He had woken up that morning disoriented without his wife by his side. He hadn't thought much of it, until he'd looked around at his surroundings with bleary eyes.

 _Why does the bedroom look like my childhood room at the Burrow?_  

He'd not connected his strange surroundings with his current predicament yet, and had wondered instead at the unusual absence of his wife's voice.

_I thought Hermione would've awakened me by now. She never likes it when I sleep in too long._

A yawn had threatened to escape from him, and he had suppressed it, rubbing with his knuckles against his eyes to chase away the sleep. The world came back into focus, sharper than before and that was when he had looked down and the world had been turned on its head.

Frowning, Ron took a fork from the drawer and began to whisk the egg.

He was glad he hadn't actually made any sound of significance, but the scream that had threatened to pour out of his mouth was still lingering at the back of his throat.

After all, how else was one supposed to react to waking up within their child body again?

Then, after his short panic outburst, he went over his training to calm himself. He reasoned that he should cast a diagnostic spell on himself to see if he had not somehow been charmed, cursed or poisoned to look the way he did. It could've been a prank by George. Or it could've been a malicious attack — he'd made his fair share of enemies in his career as Auror, after all.

But then he'd tried to find his wand, and that was the moment he realized that it was gone.

No more wand.

Panic truly began to set in for Ron.

He stripped himself off of his clothes and checked every inch of his body to find any clue for what had happened to him.

Ron only found one, but it was a significant one. A moving picture of an hourglass, fine grains of black sand trickling down to the bottom end, was imprinted upon his chest. 

It was the Mark of Chronos.

The Mark of Chronos only appeared when someone messed with time. That had been his first clue.

With the egg properly whisked, Ron set a pan upon the stove and turned on the fire.

His second clue came when he readied himself at record speed and raced downstairs to find out what was going on. He'd intended to leave for the Ministry of Magic, but instead almost tripped over the Daily Prophet.

He'd been ready to kick the paper aside when his eyes caught sight of the date: July 31st, 1991.

_Time travel._

The thought had come to him, unbidden. Somehow he had become entangled with some form of time travel. Which meant that he was currently stuck in the past.

In his _eleven year old_ body.

Taking the paper with him, Ron had taken a deep breath and gone to make himself some breakfast. He knew he had to act 'normal' in order to not disturb the flow of time and turn it into something horrible, if he ever wanted to return back to where he belonged, so that was what he would do.

Truthfully, though, he was scared out of his wits. He was suppressing his anxieties and he knew that sooner or later it was going to all bubble up and spill over.

Later was better than sooner, though.

Later, Ron might have already gone back to the future without affecting the present at all; and his young self, wherever he currently was, would return to his rightful body none the wiser. That would solve things pretty neatly.

But right now, he needed to pretend that all was normal in the world.

Thus, that was how Ron found himself in the Burrow's kitchen, making himself an omelette. As he poured his egg into the pan, he heard footsteps coming up. Since it was still early in the morning, Ron expected his mother to be the one behind him.

It was, however, the voice of his brother, that greeted him instead.

"Are you cooking, Ron?" Percy said in a tone utter disbelief.

Despite knowing that this was the past, Ron was still surprised at how much younger his brother was than he remembered him.

He turned to look at his brother uncertainly.

"Err... yes?"

The boy was looking at Ron, as if he didn't know what to think of him and that's when Ron finally remembered that as a child he had never needed to cook before, because his mother was an expert in the kitchen.

_Damn it._

"Well..." said Percy, hesitantly, "that's a really good habit to pick up, Ron, but you should be careful not to burn yourself."

Ron looked closely into Percy's face and, with older and wiser eyes, he saw for the first time something that his younger self would never have noticed: a young and insecure boy, who tried to bond with his brother, despite feeling alienated from his own family.

Ron remembered how, in the past, he had thought Percy to be stuffy, and during his times in the Ministry his brother had been a most insufferable git. Percy had always been a bit different from the rest of the Weasley family, but how many times had Percy's attempts at connecting been rebuffed, because Ron had thought him to be too much a stickler for the rules?

Perhaps the reason Percy had climbed the Ministry-ladder so fervently was because he'd felt rejected by his own family...

Ron thought of the hourglass imprinted upon his chest. He knew he shouldn't be changing the future, because how much would it affect the timeline, if he reached out to Percy now?

And yet...

It was the look in Percy's eyes that made Ron decide.

Smiling at his brother, he said, "Maybe you could help me out with breakfast, so you'll be able to make sure that I don't burn myself?"

The way that Percy's eyes lit up told Ron that he'd made the right decision.

 _Maybe I won't change the future into something worse,_ he thought.  _Maybe I can change it for the better. One step at a time._

**Author's Note:**

> If you like my work, please consider visiting my [website](https://sonnygoten.wordpress.com).


End file.
